Interested in public policy, the DC budget, research and information to inform and improve the caliber of public policy discussions or advocacy? This is the place for you: information and intelligence that improves advocacy is the stock in trade of this blog.

DCist wrote about Janney's visit to the White House press briefing room:

Janney wasn't just reliving her days as Cregg walking and talking down halls of power. She used her few minutes at the podium to bring attention to country's opioid epidemic. This is related to her current role as a recovering addict on the TV show Mom. (She even waved to the show's creator Chuck Lorre, who was sitting in on the briefing.)

On Friday, April 29 at 11:00 am, local and federal leaders will unveil the new headstone at the grave of Joseph B. Noil, a Medal of Honor recipient buried for decades in the Saint Elizabeths Hospital cemetery under a misspelled name (Joseph B. Noel). Don Morfe, who researches and photographs Medal Of Honor Recipient gravesites, discovered the grave (plot: East Campus, Section 3, Row 3, Site 535).

Honoring Noil will be Dr. Tanya A. Royster, Director of the Department of Behavioral Health; Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton; Director of the Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs Tammi Lambert; officials from the Embassy of Canada; and representatives of the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Noil received the honor for saving Boatswain J. C. Walton from drowning while serving on board the U.S.S. Powhatan at Norfolk, 26 December 1872. Noil was a Seaman at the time. Noil is one of the 90 African Americans awarded the Medal of Honor. To date, 3,470 medals have been awarded.

Noil continued to serve in the U.S. Navy with distinction, rising to the ranking of Captain of the Hold, serving on the U.S.S. Wyoming. According to Wikipedia's Joseph B. Noil article,

Joseph B. Noil enlisted in the Navy from New York; when he re-enlisted for a three-year hitch on December 29, 1874, he was described as thirty-four years old, born in Nova Scotia and a "Negro". His civilian occupation was as a caulker, and he was five feet, six inches tall.[1]

In 1881, Noil was admitted to Saint Elizabeths Hospital with paralysis. He died March 21, 1882.

Additionally, the board of the Trust will have to roll up their sleeves and embarks on an aggressive fund raising campaign, in order to continue to support those programs that are currently funded, as well as future grantees.

On February 4, the DC Environmental Network (DCEN) held the event "DCEN Networking Event: Beyond GNP? What Well-Being Can Contribute to Economics & Policy." The purpose of the event was to consider a new way of looking at, thinking about the intersection of well-being, happiness, economics, and public policy.

Carol Graham, Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow in Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution and Professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, played a leading role at the event. She briefed attendees on the emerging trend of measuring happiness and its role in economic progress.

At the meeting, DCEN announced it

will be launching a new campaign to convince the DC government to start its own well-being index project. We believe this approach could show policy makers more clearly how incorporating sustainability principles into decision making may be a more effective strategy for creating happy and healthy communities in the District of Columbia.

I'm also very excited about my new opportunity! Starting May 9, I'll be joining the White House, specifically the U.S. CIO's team, as a Digital Services Expert. I'll be working on national tech policy, and you better believe I'll be bringing the lessons I've learned here [in DC government at OCTO], and your collective wisdom, along with me.

In addition, the schedule has been modified to remove the Committee on Health & Human Services' budget hearing on the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation. As reported in Mismanagement has bankrupted a D.C. nonprofit, endangering programs for at-risk youths, board members say, Brenda Donald, "the deputy mayor for health and human services, would field questions at another hearing that day about how the administration will move forward." "That" hearing is for the office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services and takes place Thursday, April 28 in Room 412 at JAWB. The hearing starts at 10:00 am with consideration of the United Medical Center budget.

Need to keep track of the image size requirements for social media platforms? Take a look at Sprout Social's Always Up-to-Date Guide to Social Media Image Sizes. Most helpful is the Google Doc containing the dimensions and ratios for images on networks such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Need help creating images? 36 Free Tools for Creating Unique Images, again from Sprout Social, is a good place to start. Some of what you will find on the list: image design tools, quote makers, profile picture makers, and meme creators.

directing ODCA to "conduct an evaluation of multiple years of the summer youth jobs program to assess whether the program has met and is meeting program objectives." This report, which reviews the structure, eligibility rules, services, costs, and outcomes of summer youth employment programs in the District of Columbia and eight other large cities, is part of ODCA's effort to fulfill the Council's directive and inform discussions of how to make the Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program (MBSYEP) as effective as possible.

The report also includes 11 recommendations.

Perhaps the most damning and troubling finding is about the evaluation, or lack thereof, of SYEP:

Several other cities have commissioned independent evaluations of their summer youth employment programs, including studies that have randomly assigned youth to program and control groups in order to isolate the impact of the program on youth well-being. By contrast, DOES has not commissioned an independent evaluation of MBSYEP since 2010 despite a statutory requirement to do so annually.

The new initiative is designed to make AU a player in the region. According to the article,

The innovation center will offer access to resources like pitch competitions, a speaker series, mentorship and research partnerships to students across AU, not just business students, Bradley said. The goal is to teach more innovative thinking whether the students plan to start a business or no.

Bradley was DC Action for Children's first paid executive director back in 1996-1997. I had the pleasure of working for her during my second year MSW placement while at Howard University School of Social Work.

It sounds like a weird move, I know. The Post is a dream place to work in many ways, and I have fabulous colleagues whom I'll miss very much. But ever since I took a bus down here after graduating from college in 2009, I've maintained a strong belief that few serious reporters spend their entire 20s holed up in the capital of the free world.

Props to DePillis for making this huge decision. I, for one, will miss her local reporting.

Wards 7 and 8 residents, and stakeholders, can easily find out what is happening in their neck of the woods by referring to the Wards 7 & 8 Community Board! Adding events is easy; the instructions are on the East Bank DC website (link above).

WAMU has announced it plans to improve it's regional coverage. Highlights of the plan include focusing on those topics of greatest importance to listeners: transportation and development, education and inequality, race and ethnicity, power and influence, and arts and culture. In addition, WAMU news will deliver content "via broadcast, digital, on-demand, and social platforms."

The Health Inequality Project "uses big data to measure differences in life expectancy by income across areas and identify strategies to improve health outcomes for low-income Americans." DC is included in the three ranking categories compiled by the project:

Commuting Zones; Level of Life Expectancy

Commuting Zones; Annual Change in Life Expectancy

Counties; Level of Life Expectancy

Like baseball? Journalist Sean Lahman is rather fanatical and maintains a database of data on teams, players, and other (I guess) interesting information. See Lahman’s Baseball Database.

The Political TV Ad Archive "is a project of the Internet Archive. This site provides a searchable, viewable, and shareable online archive of 2016 political TV ads, married with fact-checking and reporting citizens can trust." The data can be used for various purposes, including educating students (see Ten engaging ways educators can use the Political TV Ad Archive). I wish this had been available when I was in college! It would have saved time and allowed for better analysis!

Reporter Abigail Hauslohner has moved to the national desk at The Washington Post to cover Islam, Arab affairs and America. She previously covered local DC politics, government and city hall since 2015 and joined the newspaper in 2012 as Cairo, Egypt bureau chief in 2012. Prior to that, she was Middle East correspondent for TIME.

*Preschool (PK3 and PK4) students typically have a modified schedule the first week of school to help transition to the school environment. Check with your principal about the exact schedule for your preschool child.

Monday, April 18, 2016

They are easy to use. Start with the question; you have 116 characters. Add the responses; the default is two but you can have up to four. Answers can only be 20 characters each. Then Tweet. The poll will be live for 24 hours.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

WAMU recently announced the appointment of Rob Bertrand as WAMU's Senior Director of Technology. Bertand will be lead WAMU's "broadcast and IT teams to keep everything running smoothly on air and online, and lead the evolution of technology to support new content on our listeners’ devices of choice."

I have joined MSNBC as a producer for Chris Matthews at "Hardball." I've been there two weeks and it is a pleasure to be back in the career I abandoned when my husband died and I took over his business, Nathans, and a lot of other stuff related to that. I have to admit, I love the smell and feel of a TV studio in that moment when a show goes live, and all the hyper activity involved in getting to that moment. After almost 18 years I'm home again. It may last only through the election, but what an election it is!

My job is full time and the hours are long. The show airs at 7pm on MSNBC, and most nights we are live, and we do wrap-ups to midnight and beyond on primary and debate nights.

For that reason, after the Julia Reed interview, The Q&A Cafe will be on a summer hiatus. We'll resume in the fall when my little show celebrates its 15th anniversary. Remarkable, isn't it?

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

30 Social Media Ideas In 30 Minutes offers some great ideas for ways to use social media, things to prepare for, and do's and don'ts. Categories of ideas include Crisis Communications, Content Storytelling, Social Platforms, and Social Listening.

BACKGROUND:
Chairman Mendelson will hold a media briefing to discuss major actions to be taken at the Council's legislative meeting on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 at 11:00 a.m. or immediately following the Additional Meeting of the Committee of the Whole.

Additional information is available by calling (202) 724-8032.

Unable to make it to the Wilson Building? Watch the briefing streaming live on the council website.

If you are interested in health issues, take the time to listen to Sarah Kliff: Health Care Policy in the Media. At Harvard's Shorenstein Center March 29, Kliff, deputy managing editor for visuals at Vox, talked about ACA media coverage, the future of health care policy, and how Vox covers policy.